Possible site for stadium narrows

Southwest side of campus between Lake and Pitkin streets is being considered

Apr. 21, 2012

While discussion continues as to whether CSU should build an on-campus stadium, a site-selection subcommittee recommended Friday night that it be built at one of two adjacent sites on the southwest side of campus, between Lake and Pitkin streets.

The two locations, Sites B and C on the original list of five sites under consideration by the stadium advisory committee, are on a site currently covered primarily by parking lots and research greenhouses.

"Those sites, in that general area, really emerged for us at the top, and the rest of the sites were a distant third, fourth, fifth, sixth choice," said Amy Parsons, Colorado State University's vice-president for university operations and chair of the site-selection committee.

The cost of building at the other three sites identified by the committee, and a fourth that consultants with Populous added to the list because they believed it met the general criteria, would be significantly higher because of the need to relocate existing structures that are still being used by the university.

Scott Radecic, a senior architect and principal with Populous, provided the full committee with a brief analysis of the pros and cons on building at each of the five sites that had been previously identified and a sixth just south of the preferred sites that his group felt should be considered, which he said would require rerouting Prospect Road.

"We were told, 'If you happen to see another site that makes sense for us, why don't you put it on the criteria chart,' so we did that," Radecic said during one of three presentations made to the group during the reports of the five subcommittees.

CSU is paying Populous, an international architectural firm that has designed more than 80 projects for U.S. colleges and universities, $139,000 for its work on the feasibility study. A separate consultant, ICON Venue Group, is being paid $210,000 to help manage the site-selection, design and public input process.

The two-hour, 15-minute meeting in a ballroom at the Lory Student Center, drew about 60 observers, seemingly evenly divided between the pro- and anti-stadium camps that have formed since CSU President Tony Frank and Jack Graham first put forth their arguments in favor of building an on-campus stadium in early December.

The cost of building the 40,000- to 50,000-seat multi-purpose facility Graham has spoken of has not been determined but is likely to approach about $300 million, the same amount Minnesota spent to build its stadium in 2009.

Graham and Frank, who did not attend Friday's meeting, have said that no public money would be sought for the stadium. Brett Anderson, CSU's vice-president for advancement, said in his subcommittee report that individual private donors the university has identified could be counted on to provide $50 million to $220 million toward a stadium, and corporate donations, naming rights and various fees that other uses of the facility might generate could provide additional revenue.

Frank has asked the advisory committee to make a recommendation on whether to move forward with plans to build a stadium on CSU's main campus by the end of May. Frank said last week that he would not make a decision on whether an on-campus stadium should be built until at least August.